All Is Not Lost
by Camudekyu
Summary: Practice losing something every day. [Rated for language and some gore/adult situations]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **First series. Post movie. This story was inspired by an NPR piece I heard about Representative Gabrielle Giffords. For those of you who are not American, she was a congresswoman who on January 8th of last year, was shot during an apparent assassination attempt that also wounded thirteen people and killed six more. She survived the shot, miraculously, and the NPR story was about some of the tremendous challenges facing those who have survived gunshot wounds to the head. That being said, I wrote this story over a very, very long span of time, and I am still not entirely sure what genre it would fall into. Also also also, this is for ZonkietheGreat, whom I once threatened with a multi-chapter RoyWin story.

**All is Not Lost**

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

x

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

x

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

x

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

x

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

x

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (_Write_ it!) like disaster.

-Elizabeth Bishop, _One Art_

**I.**

He was on a street, an unmaintained sidewalk. Cluttered gutters and limp, brown grass in the cracks. The flat, unembellished buildings around him were low and unmarked save brass numbers over the doors. Roy checked his watch. It said six o'clock, presumably in the evening, although the steely clouds made judging time nearly impossible. He was out of uniform. He looked down at his overcoat. Snow was sifting down slowly, menacingly, speckling his black wool sleeves.

An omelet, Roy thought. He had had an omelet for breakfast. Mushrooms from a can. Black coffee in a black mug. The acrid taste of his pain medication. That was a start.

_My name is Roy Mustang. I'm thirty... no, thirty-one now, I guess. I'm still in Central. I had an omelet for breakfast before going to work. I left work early to beat the snow. I went back to my townhouse, 115 Sixth Avenue, had an early gin and tonic. Just the one… I think. _

Roy quickly snatched at his wallet; he sometimes found clues there. Fingering through the small collection of receipts where his money should have been, he found nothing. He checked through his business cards, and still nothing.

_All right, _Roy thought, _Don't panic. It's not dark yet. _

The street lamp to his left flickered to life, then the next one, then the next.

He could feel the muscles in his shoulders tightening. A stinging wind blew up the street, throwing snow into his face.

_What did I do after getting home? _Roy wondered as he wiped his eye with his palm. He had trained himself to go systematically through the events of the day when he had episodes. Usually he could follow his way to the present, but at the moment, Roy could not quite make a complete chain. Somehow, he had gone from looking through his mail at his dining room table to standing on a sidewalk on a deserted street at dusk.

There was a street sign next to him, telling Roy that he was on Magnolia Avenue. Where the hell Magnolia Avenue was in relation to his Sixth Avenue, Roy had no idea.

He delved his hands into his pockets and fished around for a note to himself. He sometimes wrote notes to himself before he left the house alone if he were doing something distantly outside of his daily routine; he never had a problem getting to work. He could only assume that the lack of self-instruction meant that he had left his house in a hurry, perhaps to beat the sunset. But why in the snow? Ice was crusting over the ground around his feet as the snow fell lazily. What couldn't wait until the morning?

His fingertips passed over something small and round in the very bottom of his pocket. Furrowing his brow, Roy closed his fist around two metal somethings and pulled them out. In the yellowy lamplight, Roy saw two matching gold rings.

"Wedding bands?" he wondered. He held the smaller of the two up to his eye and read the inscription along the inside, hoping to see something to bridge the gap in his recollection. Instead, he saw that words _"Let __warmth, sympathy, and understanding outweigh"_ in curvy script etched delicately into the gold. "How profound," he muttered, though the maudlinness did not frustrate him as much as the ambiguity.

When that proved fruitless, Roy returned the rings to his pocket and went back to his original endeavor. He glared at his shoes, trying to remember what would make him leave his house in such a hurry. He could recall holding a tumbler in his right hand and sitting down with a small stack of mail in the other hand. The lights were on. He had already changed out of uniform…

"Goddammit," Roy snarled under his breath. Even if he were the only one who saw, this was humiliating. As if the mounting panic were not enough, he was getting more furious with himself by the second. There was not much daylight left, and Roy wished desperately that he could at least remember in what part of town he was. He did not even have his gloves with him.

Roy walked steadily to the street corner. He looked down Magnolia, which stretched out to the west before veering left and disappearing. The intersecting street, Holmes Parkway, looked about as promising.

"God_damm_it," he repeated. Why did he even leave his house so late? And without a note? And without his goddamned gloves? Roy turned around again, looking back down Magnolia, now awash with abrasive lamplight that caught blindingly in the falling snow, like if he looked hard enough, he might remember. The shadows looked theatrically dark, and his lack of depth perception did not help.

Roy glared down Holmes again. _ I had an omelet for breakfast. A tuna melt for lunch. I left work. I came home. Then I got a drink. Then I got the mail. Then I sat down at the table. _Roy pinched the bridge of his nose._ Then I _fucking_ forgot everything. _He didn't even have change for a payphone. Not that he could find one without getting himself even more lost.

"Oh, I thought that was you," a voice said from behind him.

Roy spun around and almost lost his footing on the ice. A young woman stood before him in a rather oversized and humble-looking coat, her long, blonde hair piled up messily on the crown of her head. For a terrifying second, Roy could not recall her name. He _knew_ he knew her. He knew she should have been rather memorable as well.

With a wave of marginal relief, Roy pulled her name from the damaged annals of his memory. "Miss Rockbell," he said stiffly. Yes, he remembered everything about her now. How could he forget her?

They watched each other for a moment. Roy knew he had a gift for making himself appear at home anywhere, and without a better defense, he exercised it with squared shoulders and hands in his pockets. The girl blinked and withdrew just a fraction of a step. She gestured with a thumb over her shoulder. "I was just taking out the trash and I saw you. I thought maybe it was you, but I wasn't quite sure." Roy raised an eyebrow. "So I came to check… and it turned out to be you…"

Roy wished she would go away. Or at least have the decency to turn into someone else. _Anyone_ else. "Are you well?" Roy asked politely.

"Fine, fine," she answered quickly. Roy said nothing. He had nothing to say to her, and he certainly had no desire to engage her in conversation. "Well, uh, I guess I'll see you around." She gave him a quick, rather embarrassed wave before turning around and heading back toward the stone steps of her apartment building.

Roy watched her retreating back like it was the stern of a lifeboat. Faced with the choice of wandering around the streets of Central all night in the snow or stopping Winry to ask for help, Roy found himself vacillating.

He would not have expected her to approach him. Ever. The girl he remembered would have never spoken to him voluntarily. But, then again, the bullet lodged in his brain reminded him everyday just how fallible his memory could be. And perhaps this was a testament to how desperate and bizarre he must look, shuffling around the empty, snowy streets of some neck of Central.

"Are you all right?" Winry asked from the second step to her door.

Roy had not noticed that she had stopped. He looked up and watched her for a moment.

"Mr. Mustang?" she said when he did not reply.

Roy heard himself laugh derisively. There was no way to do this with dignity. "I'm actually not exactly sure where I am." It sounded terribly casual to him, and he watched the girl, waited for the furrowed brow, the puckered lips, the pathos. The look a woman might get when she pats the round skull of a three-legged stray.

Winry blinked and said, "Well, you are pretty far from home."

"Is this Central?" Roy asked.

"Yeah, but did you walk all the way out here?"

Roy felt like an absolute idiot. He laughed as dismissively as he could. "To be perfectly honest, I'm not certain."

"Wow," she said, her eyebrows raised. "It's a pretty long walk from your house to here. I'm impressed."

A part of him felt condescended, but a greater part of him latched on to her words. "I didn't realize you knew where I lived." If she knew where his townhouse was, she could direct him back there.

Winry smiled. "I went to your New Year's party with Jean Havoc." She opened her mouth to say something but stopped herself. Roy could see from the look on her face that she was about to ask him if he remembered this joke or that drunk co-worker or something from his own party. After a pause, she added. "It was a great party, by the way."

"Thank you." They exchanged another long, thick silence before Winry cleared her throat, stepped onto the sidewalk, and approached him.

"I can give you directions back to your place, if you want."

Roy would have given a limb to be having any other conversation anywhere else with anyone but her, the girl he had promoted to his own personal demon. He did not think he was giving her a telling expression, but he could tell she knew he would not be able to remember her directions.

"On second though," she said hesitantly. "You… you can come inside. If you want. I could call a cab for you."

Roy, who typically prided himself on being able to read people, could not tell whether she wanted him to accept or not. He certainly knew that he himself did not want him to accept. His options, however, were limited.

"Thank you," was all he said. He felt her watching him for a beat too long to be natural. She turned and headed toward her original destination: a small flight of old concrete steps leading to a brown metal door whose paint was flaking around some very dubious dings. The vestibule was short and square, more of a stairwell than anything else, and choked with unchained bicycles leaning against the walls. Papery dead leaves skittered across the floor in the wind that blew through the open door. Winry led the way in and up a flight of stairs in desperate need of sweeping, dust gathered in the corners. It was the sort of not-entirely-neglected grime of a landlord too busy to clean and tenants too busy to notice. At least, there weren't children playing on the landings or hookers smoking in doorways.

They climbed to the fourth and top floor, a journey that left Roy's bad knee aching. When Winry was not looking, he kept a white-knuckled grip on the railing.

The door had a large, brass _G_ under the peephole, and Winry opened it without unlocking it.

"Excuse the mess," she said a little sheepishly. "I wasn't expecting company."

"I'm putting you out," Roy said.

She waved a hand at him. "Don't be silly. You're just making a phone call. I'm just glad I decided to come outside when I did."

_Before I could wander off? _Roy thought, _Talk to the wrong stranger and get my lunch money stolen?_

"Can I take your coat?" she asked as she stepped out of her galoshes and into a pair of house slippers, and the uncertainty in her voice betrayed how odd this was for her. Roy smiled. It couldn't possibly be any odder for her than it was for him. Well, perhaps odd in a different way—she had, after all, never executed any of _his_ loved ones. She haunted his nightmares in a very different way than he imagined he haunted hers.

Roy flinched and played it off like his knee was bothering him. Which it was. The combination of cold, barometric pressure, and Winry's stairs made the bones in his bad leg ache. "That's not necessary. I'll only be a moment."

"Oh. Okay."

They were standing uncomfortably close in a short entryway. Winry looked as though she remembered quickly that he was here for her phone, and she turned and hurried inward. The hall opened into a small room, the walls were pale green, the floor beige tile, all the trimming an aged cream color. The far wall was nearly entirely slanting windows. A row of containers huddled along a shelf under the window—coffee cans, terra cotta pots, what looked suspiciously like an engine block—all lidless and spilling over with vibrant green plants, some so tall that they pressed the glass, others draping their spindly limbs to the floor. A small, two person table sat under the window, all but one place setting occupied by what appeared to be a partially dissected automail arm. The closer wall was lined with a long work bench, a small manual mill and lathe mounted to its surface. To the left, a passage opened in a bright, white tiled kitchen, and a door to the right lead to an equally small sitting room and bedroom. Roy saw crates of metal parts, boxes of bolts and nuts, books on metallurgy and engines. The walls were covered with schematics, tacked up by the top two corners.

"The phone is in here," Winry said, and Roy realized then that she had continued into the kitchen, leaving him observing the barely contained chaos. There was something inviting about it though. Perhaps it was the imbued passion of the tenant, Roy thought—he knew some about Winry's relationship with automail. Still, he had not expected this. It rather reminded him of his apartment when he was around her age, only his blinding aspiration was his own destruction by way of alchemy.

He came into the kitchen to find Winry flipping through a phone book at the counter under a similar wall of windows opposite the entrance. In the better light, Roy could see the snow collecting on the panes, and beyond that, the wooly, unwelcoming sky. She had divested of her coat, tossed it onto a chair in the corner, and stood in her slippers, a baggy white shirt, and a pair of jeans so snug that Roy averted his gaze.

The kitchen was free of machining parts. In fact, it looked remarkably clean compared to what he'd seen so far, all scrubbed pine panels and whitewashed cabinets. This window was also bordered by a shelf of potted plants, and a rack over the sink was heavy with stainless steel pots.

"I found some numbers for cab services right here," Winry said, giving the phone book on the counter a pat. "The phone is behind you." She gestured past Roy, and he turned to see a wall-mounted phone right by the door, almost behind the icebox. "No rush," she said. When she slipped past him in the doorway, Roy found himself pressing his back to the doorframe, and she was doing the same, desperate to keep as much air between them as possible.

The first cab service told Roy, point blank, that they couldn't come out in the snow. The second suggested he find a hotel. After the third call didn't even get answered, Roy hung up the phone more forcefully than he meant to. He reached for his billfold, knowing that he had Riza's home phone number on a slip of notebook paper in the windowed slot where his driver's license had been before it was revoked. She would put the chains on her tires if he asked. She would come out in the snow. She would put herself in danger to come rescue him.

Roy clenched his jaw and flipped to the next page in the phone book. He called one, two, three more cab services before finding one that said they would come out. He would have to wait, however, both for the snow to let up and for the road crews to spread salt. Roy looked at his wrist watch. It was almost seven o'clock. The snow was collecting along the iron muntins of the window across from him like ermine stoles, getting thicker by the minute. But options were limited.

A phone number was written on a slip of paper inserted in a plastic window in the receiver, and Roy gave the taxi service that number to call when they sent out a cab. He hung up the receiver with a sigh. This had to be, unequivocally, the least comfortable situation he could imagine for himself that did not also include work or violence. Not directly, at least. To make matters worse, the small pharmacy of prescription medications he had been taking since his most recent bout of facial reconstruction surgery was waiting for him on his kitchen counter, conspicuously placed by the percolator to be sure he wouldn't overlook it. His bones ached from the cold and wet and the climb, and the warm horizontality of his own, unreachable bed called him futilely. His head was beginning to pound, and he swore he could almost feel that bullet in there, his own flesh curled around it like a fist.

His stomach gave a manifest wrenching, and Roy realized that he must have left home before even getting dinner. He glanced at the window, the snow piling up, and he knew that it was pointless to hope for a cab.

"Any luck?" Winry asked when he came back into the first room where she was tinkering with the arm on the table.

"They said they would call before they send out a driver," Roy said. "I gave them this number."

She blinked. "Oh. Okay. I guess that means you're hanging out then?"

Roy kept from cringing. He felt irrationally compelled to decline, to suggest he wait in her vestibule and would she mind poking her head out her front door and hollering down to him when the cab service called? "Unless you protest."

Winry waved her hands at him. "Oh, no, not at all."

_How generous_, Roy thought.

"Lemme get your coat," she said, rising. Roy didn't have an excuse this time. He slipped out of his overcoat, his shoulder twinging hard, and passed it to her. "Would you," she began hesitantly, her back to him as she hung up his coat by the door, "Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thank you," he said. "I don't anticipate being long." What a liar. But Winry didn't need to know that.

"You sure?" she asked. "I was going to make myself a hot toddy."

Oh. Yes, liquor might be nice. Roy didn't realize she was old enough to have such a thing in her house. "In that case, I accept." Roy smiled despite himself. His smile seemed to trigger her smile. He watched her shoulders ease a degree, which he found a little, well, strange. He did not imagine he could make her so nervous. Righteously and rightfully incandescent, sure, but nervous?

"Why don't you sit down while you wait. You might not want to touch anything, though."

Roy raised his eyebrows.

"You might get greasy."

He nodded his understanding and sank as containedly as he could into a chair at the table, his hands resting on his knees. This was absurd.

She had turned on a floor lamp between the manual mill and lathe, and it cast bold light over the schematics on the wall, turning their wrinkles into jagged, sharp peaks. The machines' shadows on the wall were enlarged, all the angles and curves exaggerated like the hulking silhouettes of monsters in children's books.

"What brings you to Midtown?" Winry called from the kitchen.

Roy heard her clinking around, setting a kettle to boil and unscrewing the lid of a handle of bourbon.

"That is a very good question," Roy said resignedly.

"I hope it wasn't anything too important."

She was much easier to talk to, Roy realized, when he did not have to see her. He, of course, didn't have much of a response to that—either it was so important that he did not have time to write himself a note or it was so inconsequential he felt it wasn't important enough to warrant a note. The latter seemed rather unlikely, though. He had a strong inkling that it was desperate news that had brought him out so late in the snow.

The kettle began to rattle in the other room.

"All I've got is Evan Williams," Winry said, sticking her head around the corner of a doorway to kitchen. She held out the bottle and gave it a shake. "Black label."

He smiled again, and Winry laughed quietly as she slipped back into the kitchen.

"I bet you're used to Woodford Reserve or Makers Mark or something, right?"

Roy wasn't sure how to interpret that. He smiled anyway, though, because he could tell from her voice that being called either sophisticated or pretentious by her was convivial.

"You must imagine me in a very different pay grade than I am," Roy replied.

"Well, it's gotta beat—" the kettle began to whistle, and Winry did not try to talk over it. Roy listened to her flip the cap open to release the steam with a tinny click, then the rush of steaming water, then the clink of ceramic and glass, and Winry emerged from the kitchen, precariously carrying two steaming mugs in one hand and, in the other, the handle a whiskey and a shot glass. She used the base of the bottle to clear away a corner of table before Roy, and she set down their mugs, the bottle and the shot glass.

She remained standing in front of Roy, which made him antsy—a twitchy combination of her seemingly careless proximity, her looming over him, and those ridiculous jeans she was wearing, made all the more ridiculous by her proximity and her looming. Involuntarily, Roy cleared his throat and readjusted himself in his seat.

"You were saying?" he blurted as she poured a shot and dumped it into one of the mugs.

Winry looked down at him and blinked. "Oh, yeah. Well, I was going to say where ever you're at has to beat my situation." She gave his teabag three good dunks and then turned the handle toward him.

"Which is?" This sounded like a strange mockery of a conversation any two other acquaintances might have. But it was they who were having it, he reminded himself. He and Winry Rockbell. How odd and entirely... unexpected?

"You're looking at it," she said with a sweep of her hand. She dumped her own shot and sank into the chair across from Roy, gears and tool spread between them. "I thought I'd make a pass at being an independent contractor, but it's a lot harder than it looks."

Judging by the state of her apartment, charming though it may be, it was quite hard.

Winry cupped her mug and looked into it. "We were the only mechanics in all of Resembool, Grandma and I. But, I swear, you can't swing an alchemist without hitting a mechanic in this town." Roy snorted into his tea. "And I guess Resembool had me spoiled because I didn't know that nobody in Central will take a lady mechanic seriously."

Roy ran his hand over his mouth to clean himself up. Winry stared at him, apparently unaware that she'd almost made hot toddy come out of his nose, and somehow, her lack of self-consciousness made it even funnier. A thought then occurred to him: "You're familiar with the Elgrin Center?" he asked. This was the military's rehabilitation hospital. The building didn't have an automail shop. It had an automail _wing. _He already knew her answer.

"Of course," she said.

"If you'd like, I'd be happy to put you in touch with the Director of Prosthetics," he told her. What he did not tell her was that he was in physical therapy there. His visits had dropped down to twice a month now, but he had, in the fall, been paying Elgrin a visit twice a week. Certainly, his word had some weight in the right ears.

Winry's eyes lit up. "You'd do that for me?"

"Certainly. I outrank him." That was, of course, intended to be humorous, but it was lost on Winry, whose face was a suddenly, unabashed shade of hope, her eyes impossibly wide and impossibly blue. Really, getting her an interview there would take almost no work from him at all, and the disproportionality of the meagerness of his effort and the magnitude of her appreciation was striking. Roy got this odd sort of sensation behind his sternum, something he hadn't felt in a long time. This was the sensation of doing someone an unsolicited generosity.

She had Urey's face, but her gestures were Sara's for sure.

Roy cleared his throat. "Do you have a business card?"

A cloud passed over Winry's features. "Oh," she paused for thought and then, brightening, said, "Yes! I do. Sit tight." She dropped her mug on the table and jumped up. She hurried through the door opposite the kitchen entrance.

Roy sat back in his chair and felt the remarkable tension in his back when he did it. He hadn't been aware that he was carrying his shoulders practically up this ears. There were some shufflings and quiet clanks from the other room, a muffled curse. Roy took the opportunity to scrutinize the room a little closer as he sipped his biting tea. He, of course, would have identified it as an alchemist's chaos, which, he knew, was simply his own projection on to it. He felt some degree of nostalgia for the indulgent disorder of a genius. He was jealous.

Winry came back into the room, pinching a card between her finger like it was a gilded antique. Still, she had an apologetic look on her face when she passed it to him. "I think I got some coolant on it."

The card had a greenish, greasy spot in one corner.

"And I might have had the stack too close to the welder."

The opposite corner was singed. But her name was clear, so was her phone number.

Roy smiled and pulled out his billfold. "Perhaps it'll make the Colonel more inclined to take a lady mechanic seriously," he joked.

She sank into her chair with relief. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, General."

Typically, after a conversation of this duration with a woman, Roy offered up his first name. A token of his sincerity. "It's nothing. I would hate to see a talent like yours wasted."

Her cheeks colored. He could see it even in the dim light. "Thanks."

"Perhaps it would have made my life easier had you been less skilled. You forget how frequently I was face to face with the business end of one of your automail fists."

She laughed a good, hard laugh at that, but that faded into a sad smile. She looked out the wall of windows over them, the swirling confusion of snow illuminated by the streetlights below. That was careless. He shouldn't have brought Edward up.

"Miss Rockbell—"

"Have you heard from him?" she asked, flicking her eyes toward Roy.

She didn't sound accusatory, which Roy rather thought was more charitable than he deserved.

Her gaze slid back to the window, a striking contrast of white snow and black glass. "I know the investigation has been closed and that Alphonse is back so that means," she paused, "something had to be traded. But," she turned to him, her face so honest Roy almost flinched, "I never could shake the feeling that you might know something and, maybe, the military... I don't know, had something to do with it?"

This would have been a wonderful situation for some diplomatic applications of palliating white lies. However, Roy had never had a knack for candy-coating. Plus this was the daughter of the doctors Rockbell; Winry didn't need a blow softened. "Edward wouldn't die for the military and certainly not for me. But he wouldn't hesitate to give his life for Alphonse."

"I suppose you're right," she admitted. "Still. It doesn't feel like he's dead, just..." She twisted her mouth in thought.

"Lost?" Roy offered.

She gave him a sad smile. "Yeah. Like he's still out there _somewhere_," she made a circular gesture toward the sky, "Just not here."

Roy personally believed Edward was dead. He'd made himself transmutation fodder, which always had been a gruesome inevitability of the Elrics' journey. A long time ago, Edward's passion might have almost persuaded Roy otherwise, but then he remembered: alchemy was not a compassionate science. It broke more men than it ever saved.

However, if that was how Winry chose to cope with the loss of Edward, Roy would not challenge that. Edward certainly left an indelible impression on anyone he met, so in that sense, he was not gone. And Winry, who knew more years of Edward than anyone else—even Alphonse—could keep Edward alive if she wanted to.

She sighed, watching her hot toddy steaming away in her hands.

Roy took a bracing swallow from his mug, and it burned all the way down, scalding tea and cheap bourbon. He was trapped here, he thought. The snow was not going to let up. The taxi wasn't going to come. He'd spent thousands of dollars repairing his right knee, kissed by a passing bullet, and the notion of testing it on the icy sidewalk was not an appealing one.

He was alone with Winry Rockbell. On her turf. At her mercy. He took another draw off his hot toddy.

Winry snatched up the handle of bourbon, unscrewed the lid, and poured another shot. It sat between them for a moment, and Roy wasn't certain who it was for. But then she made an open-palmed gesture toward him and smiled. He tried not to look too grateful but did not hesitate to accept, raise the glass to his mouth, and toss it back. It tasted like medicine. A poorly executed mimicry of sweetness.

When he set down the glass, Winry swept it away from him and poured another shot. He watched her lift it to her lips with no hesitation at sharing his glass. She poured her shot down her throat and put the glass down hard. It was a disconcertingly intimate thing to watch, a woman drinking from his glass.

"Well, anyway," Winry began with a smile, her voice a little constricted from the liquor. "My certification number is on the card, too, if he asks. I can get references and testimonials and everything."

Roy smiled. "I doubt that will be necessary."

"Sure, if you _order_ the guy to hire me," she said with a shrug and watched her fingers as she turned the shot glass around and around again. She peered up through her bangs, eyes narrowed, "You're not going to order him to hire me, are you?"

"That would be an egregious abuse of my power, Miss Rockbell," he replied sternly. Then, easier, "I'll order him to interview you, but you're on your own after that."

She looked upward, toward the piling snow out her window. "Wow. Elgrin," she sighed. "I was afraid I was going to have to start looking for waitressing jobs or something." She laughed quietly. "I guess it pays to have friends in high places, huh?"

Friends? Roy stared at her.

Winry seemed not to understand what was wrong with that statement for a long moment. Then her eyes went wide. Her face flushed.

In an instant, the spell was broken. The power of warm liquor and her uninvited, unearned affection lapsed. He wanted to be _friends_ with the daughter of the Rockbells about as much as he would want to spend another six weeks in traction.

There was, of course, nothing wrong with the girl as a person. She seemed bright and kind, fiery and quick to laugh. She certainly was generous, sharing her liquor with a pseudo acquaintance. Not an enemy, necessarily. They were terribly close—their histories were, at least—in the same way a person knows intimately his recurring nightmares. They knew some very personal details about each other. But their closeness was a farce. It was the product of his transgressions. Based on his trespass upon her. His malefaction and her victimhood. They were anti-friends.

Perhaps were she anyone else. Were he someone else.

Perhaps if he had come to terms with executing the Rockbells as much as he insisted that he had come to terms with it, he could look at her and see more than their absence.

Why did she let him into her home? Why did she let him use her phone, sit at her table? Why did she take his coat and offer him tea and bourbon? Why was she not gouging out his remaining eye with her thumbnail or pouring him shots of strychnine or leaving him wandering around in the snow, lost and frightened and as powerless as he had made her when he robbed her of her childhood?

He wished she would stop looking at him with such contrition. What the hell did she have to be sorry about?

"I think I'll give the cab service another call."

She twisted the string of her tea bag around her index finger. "I don't think it's any use," she said. The next logical question to ask was something like _where do you plan to deposit your waning hulk for the night? _Or_ where will you rest that unreliable head?_ And Roy watched her, waited for her to ask it. He'd done nothing to earn the blow softened. Certainly she had no reason to grind the edges off his humiliation. Particularly now that she'd done something as foolish as open that first stitch and he'd all but called her a fool for it.

"You're not getting hungry, are you, General?"

Roy blinked his one eye, watched her unscrew the cap on the bourbon and pour out another shot. She dumped the first half in his tea and the second in hers, her eyes downcast.

And perhaps, Roy wondered, it was not entirely fair to translate his shame with himself into frustration with her. He almost laughed at himself. Perhaps, and what a radical notion this was, it was unreasonable to ascribe his feelings of guilt to her generosity. Was she exonerating him with a cup of tea and two and a half shots of cheap bourbon? Maybe this is what being absolved looks like: an invitation into your victim's home, having your coat taken, being offered dinner.

He must have been quiet for too long.

"General?" she repeated.

"I'm imposing," Roy said.

She put up her hands and shook her head. "No, not at all. You're doing me a favor, in fact. It makes me feel little more human when I'm not eating alone all the time. I haven't had company in... well," she looked upward in thought, "um, ever, actually. Not since I moved in here."

It showed.

"If my company makes you feel human, Miss Rockbell, I might suggest a good psychiatrist." But he understood. He was feeling rather abruptly human himself.

She laughed, a soft, open-mouthed sound. Her shoulders bowed in a little and she slid her feet out of her chair as though she were preparing to stand.

"This has been," Roy began, almost despite himself, "Somewhat unexpected."

Winry blinked at him and smiled. "I'm glad."

"Oh?"

She looked into her tea and shrugged a little. "You weren't... I mean," she peered back at him. "You weren't expecting anything good when you came up here, were you?" Roy started, and she saw. "You won't offend me or anything. I mean, I understand." She looked down again. "I've said some... really awful things to you, General."

None of them entirely unearned.

"But, when Edward left, I decided something." She lifted her tea to her lips and took a drink, and when she set it back down, she leveled her gaze on Roy so firmly, he almost felt challenged. "He had a lot of respect for you. He had a funny way of showing it, but I knew he respected you. And I do, too. And," she sought the right words, "I know a lot of things I didn't know a few years ago." She didn't elaborate, and Roy desperately wished she would. "And I want you to know," she looked to be bracing herself, drumming up courage, "I'm not angry anymore."

Something was cinching around his lungs.

"Really, I'm not," she concluded. Then she laughed. "To tell you the truth, I've been thinking lately how nice it would be to say that to you, but I didn't think I'd ever have the chance." She shook her head and finished cheerily, "But, lo and behold, I go to take out my trash and there you are. Outside my apartment."

He was monumentally unprepared for this. His face must have shown it because she smiled at him, a sweet, compassionately thing.

"I'm glad you came by, General. So let me make you some dinner to show my gratitude."

x

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x

Roy insisted on helping her prepare dinner, partly because having the Rockbell daughter serving him made him desperately guilty but also because sitting alone at her table, just him and the mess, was really weird.

Winry's kitchen was full of light and colors and textures, bright and warm against the snow piling high against her window. With the bourbon taking a good, welcome hold of him, too, Roy found himself much less uncomfortable being in such visual proximity to Winry's jeans. He watched her chopping onions and whistling, and while part of his mind pondered just how silly those things were—she might as well paint clothing on for all the concealing her outfit did—another part of him just enjoyed it. It was not often he found himself in such a setting with so young a woman. In fact, in the last few months, he'd caught himself making the conscious choice to avoid it. Not that the blonde twenty-somethings were falling into his lap or anything, but young women, when they did wander into his proscenium, reminded him of kittens. They were so active and high energy and required so much damn entertaining—lest they get bored and become destructive—and he simply did not desire it anymore.

But Winry was there, requiring nothing of him. Just that he drink her bourbon and laugh at her jokes, and this was no real challenge as he had learned never to turn down bourbon when one has nowhere to go and Winry was really a very charming girl.

How long, he wondered, had they orbited each other? A careful distance calculated to keep them both from colliding and from spinning away?

Winry had asked him to mince garlic while she brought water to a boil and poured in a box of macaroni. "Glorified mac'n'cheese," she said as she reached into the cabinet and brought down a can. She pointed at it sheepishly. "A can of cheddar soup and onions."

"A can of soup?" Roy asked. "You don't make a roux?"

Winry wrinkled her nose. "I don't make a who?"

"A roux."

"Um, I guess not."

Roy smiled. "Step aside."

Winry put up her hands and laughed. "Be my guest."

Roy went about cooking the onions and garlic in a wide, copper skillet, instructing Winry to get flour, oil, milk, and cheese for him. She complied and then hovered by his shoulder to watch. Roy showed her the combination and steps—add flour first then an equal amount of oil, stir until it makes a paste, then add milk until the sauce reaches the desired consistency—and he noted her watching him with the attention to detail of a chemistry apprentice.

Something about the bright copper and the warm smell brought back a memory Roy had not rehashed in quite some time. He laughed.

"What?" Winry asked, leaning her hip against the counter to his right.

"A fit of nostalgia," he answered, "I just remembered learning to make my first roux."

"How long ago was that?"

Roy thought for a moment. "I was fourteen, I think." He snorted. "That's ironic. I can remember something that happened practically twenty years ago, but I can't remember why I left my house this evening." He shook his head. "It's frustrating."

"That's a good sign, though," Winry chimed in, standing up straight. Roy was hard pressed to believe her, and his face must have shown it because she went on, "Every time you get frustrated, you're running into connections that were damaged. And you're rebuilding them." She nodded her head hopefully. "You'll get them back."

Roy hesitated for a moment. His doctors, of course, had always given him a bleaker prognosis than that—he supposed this was to keep him from getting too hopeful given the severity of his injury and the unpredictable nature of brain damage in general. But her attitude was refreshing. He found himself not immediately disregarding her optimism.

"You seem so confident."

Winry scoffed. "Nerve reconstruction is an automail mechanic's bread and butter, you know. And the great thing about nerves is the more you use them, the faster they grow back. With your being an alchemist and all, you'll be good as new in no time, General."

He resisted looking at her and tapping his eyepatch as though to say, _No I won't._ She was trying to make him feel better, after all, and she'd done better than most. No need to punish her for trying.

"Perhaps you'll do me the favor of dropping the title?" he asked. The expression of shock that crossed her face made him laugh out loud. When he looked back at her, she was still blinking owlishly at him.

"You want me to call you... Roy?"

"It's not nearly so difficult as you make it sound."

"Roy."

"Good try. A little less terror next time, if you don't mind."

She looked like she was trying to juggle marbles in her closed mouth. Then she started to laugh at herself.

"Something funny?"

"No," she managed, and then, "I mean, yes, I guess." She flushed, down her throat and up to her ears. "I never thought I'd see the day..."

She didn't need to finish the sentence—he was feeling rather similarly.

Roy watched Winry pour the pasta through a colander, toss it in with his roux, and beginning scooping out servings into mismatched, ceramic bowls. His was wide and shallow with a red glaze, and Roy thought Winry's looked suspiciously like a large, blue mug. When she turned it in her hands, Roy saw that it, indeed, had a handle.

"Come on," Winry said, holding a mug of dinner in one hand and a mug of cold hot toddy in the other, "I usually eat in the parlor by the gramophone." She turned and slipped into the darkness in the next room.

Roy blinked. "You have a parlor?"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Chapter two. Thanks, y'all.**  
**

**II.**

On the opposite end of Winry's apartment was what she called the parlor. Truly, she had a long bedroom with a faux Xingese privacy screen stretching from the wall to almost the middle of the room. Roy could see her bed around the screen, her dirty laundry draped around, and, of course, more mechanical clutter. The mess here, however, was rather more controlled—the stacks of things were pushed to the wall, at least, revealing the really nice, dark hardwood floor and a large, threadbare area rug. This room, he noticed, did not have any machinery in it, and Winry showed him to a large, lumpy couch with a sagging center and faded floral upholstery. A low coffee table sat between the couch and a purely decorative fireplace, and Winry plunked her dinner down on the opposite side of the table and sank to the floor. Roy took the hint and sat on the couch.

"Oh, right, the music," Winry said, popping back up. She hurried around the couch to where the gramophone sat on a small, wooden table. "Hope you like Romantic Era Aerugan. It's all I've got." She paused to think. "I might have an old propaganda record from before the Reformation, but I don't imagine you'd want to listen to that."

"Not voluntarily."

"Aerugan it is." As she set up the record, she began to sing tunelessly, _"Oh, Mother Amestris, I'd give my life for thee."_

Roy hadn't heard that one since, maybe, sophomore year at the academy. "It's overrated," he muttered.

"Huh?" Winry said, the needle hovering in her hand.

"Giving your life for Mother Amestris," he repeated, "It's overrated."

Winry was still for a long moment, staring at Roy, before she started the record and adjusted the volume. She came back to the table and stood opposite him, her hands on her hips. Her eyes were narrowed slightly, and Roy had the disconcerting sensation of being appraised. He'd offended her. He was certain of it. "I think _almost_ giving your life for your country is overrated," she countered as she plopped down on the floor in front of the coffee table. "I don't imagine you worry too much about things like that once you've succeeded."

That stung a bit.

She would know, wouldn't she? She'd watched enough of her loved-ones do it. And Roy knew all about almost giving his life, about surviving his own martyrdom, and when she put it like that, he felt impossibly pathetic. When he met her eyes, he knew that she knew it, too. And they both knew that he deserved that.

But then she was smiling at him again and saying cheerfully, "Although, if you actually die for your country, you don't get to cash in that banging pension you guys get."

She went about eating her dinner with one hand and rubbing a stain on the table with her other, and Roy got the distinct feeling that he had just glimpsed an old bitterness in her, perhaps a healed-over hurt. Still a scar.

"You think much about retirement?" she asked, a prompt for such a harmless conversation that Roy started. He hesitated for a moment, blinking his one eye at her. But, no, there was no veiled passive aggression behind it. She was simply asking him a question.

He smiled. "I'm not nearly so old as that," he replied.

Winry pinked a little. "Oh, jeez, sorry. I didn't mean it like that," she stammered, putting up her hands. She had, of course, found him wandering around the street outside her house, so perhaps retirement was not so great an analytical leap, but he didn't say that.

"I'm only joking," he replied, even though she looked thoroughly mortified. "I haven't, actually. It's been suggested to me more than I'd like to admit, but I've not looked too hard at the logistics."

She furrowed her brow. "Folks are suggesting you retire?" she mused, "I guess I don't know much about it, but you seem pretty fit for duty to me."

Roy laughed out loud at that. "A man with a weapon and no depth perception can be quite the liability, Miss Rockbell."

She skipped pink and turned red this time, and Roy laughed again. She dropped her face into her hands. "God, I'm an asshole, aren't I?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"Clearly, I'm not so sensitive as you believe I am," he said. That wasn't true at all, and he could tell that she knew it. However, it felt rather satisfying to say it, to assert it to a woman who really did not owe him her sensitivity. On top of that, Roy was beginning to feel rather pleased with himself and how _not_ sensitive he was being—coming up to Winry's apartment, drinking her booze, and sharing her conversation took a measure of bravery that he, quite honestly, had not known he possessed. It gave him a sense of invulnerability, like sitting in Winry's parlor was similar to sitting in a lion's den.

But she wasn't going to eat him, he thought when he looked over at her, swirling a soggy tea bag in her mug. And he never had been at risk of being eaten by her, had he? No, the only thing between the two of them that might consume him was his own fear, and he had, up until quite recently, been blaming her for that.

"The looming threat of involuntary retirement notwithstanding," Roy went on, "I'm confident I won't be seeing conflict again."

Winry took a pull off her mug. "Well, I bet that someone with your rank wouldn't be running around punching bad guys anyway, right? You're a strategist."

"The sun has definitely set on my bad-guy-punching days." Roy had no particular desire to linger on this specific subject as it seemed to lend itself to talking about Ishbal, and he really could not, even in his blackest masochistic fit, cognize of a situation more distasteful than talking about Ishbal with Winry Rockbell. "To be honest, between ironing wrinkles out of the Articles of Reformation—which were, I think everyone should know, written by academics and accountants—and this country's abrupt disinclination toward conflict, I think I'll be spending the balance of my career behind a desk."

"You don't sound too disappointed."

Roy smiled. "I'm not. Decisions are made by the men behind the desks not the men dying for them."

She stabbed a few noodles with her fork, popped them in her mouth, and then asked thickly, "You ever think about running for Senate?" she asked. "I can't tell you how many times I hear people griping about voting in representatives who don't know a thing about the military."

"Do you agree with them?"

"Well, I think it's on a case by case basis, but I do know that when you overspecialize, you breed in weakness, and all the men in Senate right now are lawyers. They all think like lawyers." She frowned. "Not to mention that they're all men. I don't really feel represented by any of them."

He smirked. "Perhaps _you_ should be the one running for Senate."

She laughed drily. "It's not allowed. I checked. There are three qualifications to run for Senate," she held up her hand and counted off, "At least three decades of life, a penis, and a pulse."

Roy should have expected Winry to have a mechanic's mouth on her: she didn't seem too terribly shy about discussing penises with him, so he resolved not to be either. "One out of three isn't bad."

"Tell that to a pollster. I wouldn't be surprised if, of those three things, having a pulse is the only negotiable one."

Roy laughed out loud at that. "You don't seem to have an awful lot of faith in the new government."

"Bureaucrats! All of them!" She shook her head. "If you ask me, more laws aren't really the answer. Don't get me wrong. I think it's great not having a bloodthirsty monster making all the decisions for the country, but he wasn't quite so all about getting involved in every aspect of individuals' lives, you know? I heard the other day that there's a bill in Senate right now that will make every alchemist get a license to perform alchemy!"

Roy had heard about that. He, personally, didn't think it was such a bad idea. "It could save a lot of lives you know."

"It will also turn alchemy into a commodity."

"It already is."

"It might seem that way to you because you're certified, but most practicing alchemists out there aren't doing it for money. If this happens, government issuance of licenses will be a business with all the motivations of a business. Alchemists don't grow on trees, though, so demand won't be through the roof, and that means alchemy will only be available to people who can afford a fancy education and the license."

Winry was sharp as a tack, Roy thought. He'd had no idea. Smirking, he said, "You're quite the libertarian." She stared at him, confused. "Liber_tarian._ Not libertine," he clarified.

"Oooh," she said, nodding. "I was about to say..."

Roy laughed. "Well, having seen the way you drink whiskey..."

She grinned and shrugged. "It's a mechanic thing."

"Go in for your interview at Elgrin and say exactly that. I guarantee you that they'll take you more seriously."

She was laughing with her head tossed back, an open-mouthed sound, her hands on her solar plexus, when the phone rang. She stopped laughing with a quiet _Oh!, _put her hands on the floor, and hopped up to her feet. "Maybe that's your cab."

Honestly, Roy had forgotten about the cab. In the moment, he had quite forgotten about the snow, about his unknown reasons for being so far from home, about his panic at being trapped under a Rockbell roof. Instead, he had been having dinner in the parlor of a friend. _Friend?_ A pretty young woman who, for so many reasons, he could not pursue. They had been talking like companions, hadn't they? Eating macaroni and cheese and discussing politics. What an incredible display of mundanity. The gramophone rumbled on in the background, and Roy took the moment of solitude to shovel a few much-appreciated forkfuls of dinner into his mouth. He'd outdone himself, it seemed—this was one of his better roux. The onions caramelized just right. The garlic strong but balanced. He hadn't made dinner for a woman in a _very_ long time, and the irony that his first meal for someone else was for Winry Rockbell was not lost on him. He'd been on dates that hadn't gone so well as this.

Her voice was muffled and distant in the kitchen, but he could hear her, mellowed and clipped. The phone made a series of clicking sounds when she hung it up, and she returned to the parlor shortly after, two shot glasses and the bottle of whiskey in her hand.

"That was the cab company," she said, and her voice was too apologetic for it to have been any kind of good news.

"You don't sound very positive about it."

"Yeah," she said somewhat reluctantly. "They called to say that they're not sending anyone out tonight. The roads probably won't get plowed until the morning, and it's too dangerous to have cabs out on the ice."

Roy looked down in his pasta. "Well, damn." What the hell was he supposed to do now?

"You know," she began as she stabbed at her dinner aimlessly, "You're welcome to crash here if you need. I don't have a spare bedroom or anything, but the couch is pretty comfortable. Also, I've retrofitted my water heater, so the thing's a tank. You'll be able to get a hot shower in the morning if you want one."

Roy turned over her offer for a moment. It was that or try to make his way home in the dark, over the ice. There was no guaranteeing, either, that he wouldn't forget what he was doing halfway through and end up stranded in a different end of the city, this time without the immense generosity of a mostly-stranger-partial-enemy like Winry to help him. What else could he do? It did help, though, that Winry had brought out the whiskey, letting him know that, should he decide to stay the night, he could get good and drunk without reservation.

"It doesn't look like I have much choice, do I?" he said.

She was cringing apologetically a little when she said, "I don't think so." Her face shifted, then, to a smile. "On the bright side, now I have someone to help me drink this whiskey."

Roy smiled. She'd read his mind. "I appreciate the offer." He watched her pour their two shots and push his glass toward him. "I really do apologize, Winry. I was not expecting to have to find a place to stay."

She shrugged and waved at him dismissively. "It's no big deal. Seriously, though? I'm glad for the company."

Roy raised his shot glass to his mouth. "Even me?"

She did the same, smiling against the lip. "Even you," she said and tipped it back into her mouth. He tossed back his shot and savored every burning inch down his throat.

x

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x

It wasn't long before they had finished their dinners and Winry had brought out two bowls of ice cream with walnuts on top. Dinner had helped to mitigate some of the alcohol sloshing around in Roy's stomach, but he was at least two sheets to the wind when they reached the bottom of the bottle. Winry, to her credit, kept up with him shot for shot. Roy imagined that he had a foot of height and almost a hundred pounds on her, so if he were feeling the booze, she certainly was, too. Still, Winry did not slur or stagger. She became more talkative, less inhibited, but Roy didn't know if the alcohol was to blame for that or if it was this sudden, unexpected camaraderie burgeoning between them. Or perhaps the alcohol was the source of it all. Regardless, he was snowed into her apartment until the morning, so did it really matter what was to blame? Winry smiled so readily, told him the truth without hesitation, laughed at his dumb, contrived humor, and he began to wish he had more women like this in his life. Women friends. Yes, _friends_. The authenticity of her responses struck him. She was not trying to seduce him, and she was not trying to follow his orders—those were the two modes of women with whom he was most familiar. She was just a person. Someone who owed him nothing.

She made them fresh cups of tea, this time without whiskey. She poured them strong, a teaspoon of honey in each, and passed him his mug, telling him that she needed to sober up a bit if she wanted to stay asleep through the night. They sat, side by side on the couch, listening to Aeurgian symphonies, one after another. Winry had pulled her feet up onto the cushions, her knee almost brushing Roy's thigh, while he slouched back, his legs stretched more leisurely than he could remember being in the recent past. She began probing him for information about his brain damage—Roy remembered her fascination with all things nervous system, and he was just drunk enough not to care.

"The bullet is lodged in my frontal lobe. Just here," he poked his index and middle fingers against the peak of his eyepatch. "The doctor would have removed it, but—"

"It's got to be super close to the artery," Winry said, scrutinizing his face with a scientific interest.

"Precisely," he said. "The risks of removing it outweighed the benefits."

"Benefits, my foot," Winry said, sitting back. "You've got to regrow that brain of yours regardless of what's stuck in there." She paused. "Does it ever bother you?"

"Does what bother me?"

She twisted her mouth thoughtfully. "Having something stuck in there? A foreign object?"

Roy shrugged. "I was rather hoping it would give me super powers, but as of yet, I can neither fly nor see through walls."

Winry laughed. "That's not what I meant."

He knew. "I know," he said. "I'm a little surprised to hear an automail mechanic so concerned about foreign objects. You deal exclusively in foreign objects."

"But anything that I put on a client is on the outside. I only do limbs. I know mechanics who engineer false bones that go inside the body to replace ones that are too badly damaged, but I haven't ever tried that. Everything that I attach to someone is external. Compared to what you have going on, it seems almost... well..."

"Superficial?"

"Exactly. You've got something in you that is really _in_ you. What is that like?"

"I can't ever feel it, if that's what you're asking," Roy answered. "I don't feel much heavier, either. I haven't set off a metal detector yet. To be honest, aside from a visceral understanding of what senility must be like, I don't feel much different. The headaches and dizziness have passed for the most part."

"It's just your memory?" she finished for him

"It's just my memory," he concluded.

She was smiling at him in a way that Roy knew resulted from her thinking of something quirky or profound, and he found himself excited to hear what she had to say. "Maybe this is your chance to live with less memory," she suggested.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, in all those Eastern religions, they talk about the importance of living in the moment. Living without judgment or attachments. This could be your chance to do that. I mean, what makes us the most emotional? Memories. What is everyone hung up on when they try to move on from something? Memories. Maybe, you're supposed to try to live without memories."

"Supposed to? According to whom?" he asked. "Remember, I'm an alchemist, Winry. I don't believe most of that religious BS."

"I'm not suggesting religious BS," she countered tartly. "Supposed to according to... to... the human condition. Do you know how much more I could get done if I didn't snag on a

memory every ten minutes?"

"There's still plenty of snagging," Roy responded. "I can remember as effectively as the next man most of the last thirty years. Particularly, the most challenging parts. It's hanging onto new memories I'm not so good at."

"It just takes practice. And, hey, you're practicing all the time!"

Roy smiled. She certainly was an upbeat girl.

"Should I expect to hear you wake up halfway through the night, wondering who's holding you hostage in their dinky little apartment?" she teased.

That could have stung, but surprisingly, Roy snorted. "It's possible. I haven't slept in a bed that wasn't mine in quite some time, so I couldn't tell you what to expect." It then, quite suddenly, occurred to him that that was a rather more revealing comment about his social life than he had intended it to be. He didn't often make a habit of telling pretty, young women about all the sex he _wasn't_ having.

He rather expected Winry to blush and look away uncomfortably, to clear her throat and excuse herself, and when he glanced at her it was with some degree of dread.

As soon as he met her eyes, though, she began to snort. Then she tossed her head back and laughed. He heard her slap her knee, and she pressed her other hand to her chest as she gasped. And that, at his expense or not, was the best possible response he could have hoped for. With a rush of relief, he began chuckling—he could appreciate self-deprecating humor.

"You poor guy," Winry said through her laughter. "You just can't catch a break."

He should have known that she wouldn't be embarrassed—this was, after all, the same woman with whom he'd discussed the senatorial penis-requirement. Obviously, Winry was not so a squeamish woman as he had anticipated. He shrugged, "There's nothing like losing an eye to help you re-prioritize."

She quirked her head. "What do you mean?"

Roy wondered that himself for a moment. He had not really thought about it much, this sudden lagging in his usual social exploits. He would have, of course, blamed it on his slow, awkward recovery and the truly immense patience a woman would have to have in order to get involved with him now. He had not been willing to put forth the effort required to pursue a woman, quite frankly. But it seemed like rather more than that now. "I mean you begin putting the things that are important to you on a numbered list." He had done just that, on one of the many long, painful nights he had spent coming off the morphine—and remarkably, sex had not appeared on that list.

"What are your top three?" Winry asked, hugging her knees and her eyes lighting up with interest.

Roy smiled at her enthusiasm. "Recovering, dignity, and integrity."

She blinked owlishly. She sat back a little. "Whoa." She shook her head a little. "Whoa. That's kind of heavy."

He laughed out loud at that.

"Recovering, dignity, and integrity," she repeated. "What does integrity mean to you?"

Roy knew the answer to that already. "Doing the right thing even when no one is watching. It means knowing the difference between the choice that is right and the choice that is comfortable." He could tell that she knew exactly where she fit in his decision to put that in his top three. Her eyes showed that she was thinking what he was thinking—picturing her parents, their smiles he could remember and their bloodless bodies he hoped to God she never had to see. He'd made more victims from his poor choices than any otherwise well-meaning man alive. He was confident of that. But ignorance was not an excuse. Looking into Winry's pellucid blue eyes told him that ignorance was never an excuse. "What are yours?" he asked, feeling the liquor swimming in his thoughts and resolving not to fight it.

She pushed her gaze to the ceiling as she thought for a moment. "I'm living on my own for the first time, so self-sufficiency," she said, "I'm a mechanic, so, of course, precision, and..." she paused and her face sank a little, as though she were realizing something she had not thought of before. Her eyes searched the darkness for something Roy could not see. She flicked her gaze over to him and concluded, "forgiveness."

That could have been a stiletto slid between his ribs. _Forgiveness_. What had he done to deserve the energy she must have put into forgiving him... what had he done, honestly, to earn it? She was trying. He could see it in her eyes. She was trying with all her might to forgive him. She was succeeding, too, and Roy believed, truly, that there was nothing he could ever aspire to do to deserve it.

"All right," she continued, slapping her knees as she stood. "I think it's time to hit the hay. Lemme get you some sheets and a pillow."

"I appreciate it."

She turned back to him, grinning. "Don't thank me until I find some clean sheets."

He smiled at her because she was being humorous, but once she was gone, he put his elbows to his knees and his palms to his face and he berated himself over and over and over.

x

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x

Winry returned with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow. She made a little nest for him on her couch, her linens smelling fresh and soft over the lazy, lived-in smell of her couch. Then she left to change into her pajamas behind the folding screen that separated Roy's room for the night from her bedroom. The streetlight that came in through the window, however, cast her silhouette sharply against the screen, doing little to maintain her modesty. As he slipped out of his suspenders and unbuttoned his shirt, he stole glances at her shape, the vague representation of her against the screen, the idea of her breasts and the distant notion of her hips.

"I'd offer you a set of pj's," she said from behind the screen as she pulled on her boxy, shapeless pajamas, "but I'd cry if they fit you."

Roy laughed. He tossed back the blanket she had draped over the couch and slid between the sheets. The couch was just a little too short to accommodate his height, so he rolled onto his side and tucked his knees up just a degree—he knew he would regret it in the morning when he had to straighten his legs, but he would cross that bridge when he reached it. The pillow was soft and thin, and he bunched up one side to support his neck. The couch was, indeed, quite comfortable. It was wide and soft and curved just enough to follow his back. He reached up and clicked off the lamp on the side table. He could see just a little of the window above Winry's bed over the top bar of the screen between them, and the snow was still piling up against the glass, turning the harsh streetlight to a canary color, muted and soft. He listened to her linens rustling and her mattress creaking and her floorboards squeaking as she lifted one foot and then the next off the ground. He listened to her punching her pillow and nestling down. He listened to her turning until she was settled. Then he listened to her slow, easy breathing—a quiet, feminine snore—as he lay awake and stared at the pictures of her parents she had poised over the mantel. In the dim light, he could hardly see their faces, but his memory served to fill in the rest until he finally drifted off to sleep.

x

x

x

In his nightmares, Roy saw women and children. He saw the bodies fleeing in the dark through the huge, heavy doors of the Ishballan temple, seeking refuge in the chapel, where the candles flickered and guttered. He saw his colleagues pushing the doors closed and using alchemy to fuse them shut. He saw his own right hand raised and snapping and the church bursting into flames from the inside. He saw the fire dancing against the glass windows before the heat caused them to shatter. He saw a woman with her baby trying to clamber through the window only to slice ribbons of skin off her arms and face and impale herself on a long spire of iron in the frame. He saw the child, open-mouthed and wailing, until the smoke silenced it.

"Roy."

He must have fallen asleep with war on his damaged mind, Winry's parents watching him from the mantel. His mind must have grown cruel in it's recovery, compelling him to see these things while sleeping on Winry's couch. He had not dreamt of the church in years, of the heat on his face and the frigid desert night at his back, of the smell of burning young bodies and ancient scrolls.

"Roy!"

The woman hanging limply in the window, her dead baby slung across her back, pushed herself up against the window frame. He watched her claw at the plaster on the outside of the wall, her mouth and burnt-out eyes gapping at him, black and eternal. She tore the skin off her fingertips, stripped them to the bone as she scrabbled at the wall until her flesh gave, the puncture in her belly splitting into a fissure. She tore her top half free, leaving her hips dangling limply inside.

"_Roy!"_

He saw her torso flop to the ground as the blood gurgled, black and fleshy, out of her mouth. She began reaching toward him, dragging her shoulders across the sand, and Roy stood frozen in terror, watching this dead half body and its dead baby hauling itself, hand over hand, toward him. He tried to take a step back, but the blood pooling around his feet had turned the sand into wet cement, sucking at his boots and tightening around his ankles. He lost his balance and fell backwards, and the half body descended on him, her empty, oozing mouth forming words he could not hear as she drew closer and closer. He could smell her burning breath across his face. Her hand, the skin and flesh shredded from her knobby finger bones, clamped onto his forearm. It was a claw, pinning him down, pulling him into the blood.

"_Roy!"_

Roy sat up with a yelp, wrenching with all his might away from Winry's hand on his forearm. He squeezed his eye shut and shook his head, but behind his eyelid the fire still raged, that burnt-out face still pressing ever closer to his. He had to get away from the church, had to get a breath of smokeless air before he suffocated. He rubbed his hand against his eye, felt his heart thundering in his chest and his lungs constricted.

"Goddammit," he heard a voice say. It was a man's voice. His? "_Goddammit_."

"It's okay," a woman said. "It's okay. You're okay."

"We locked the door. We burned the church and we locked the door."

The air tasted of smoke and then it did not and then it did again, and Roy could hear the timbers in the roof cracking. No one screamed anymore. They were all dead before the roof could give.

"Look at me," a woman commanded. It wasn't the burning woman—she was ashes now, leaving behind only her reek. "Goddammit, Roy, open your eyes and look at me."

He obeyed when Winry seized the front of his undershirt and shook him hard. Then, abruptly, he was in the dark—his mind, however, was in many places at once. He gasped in a ragged breath. The parlor was dark save an illuminated lamp next to the couch. Winry knelt between his knees, her eyes bigger and bluer than the sky.

He met her gaze for just a moment and then she flung herself at him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. He felt her hands splayed over his back. Her shoulder pressed into his face, and it took Roy another moment to realize that she was hugging him.

In an instant, the vestiges of the nightmare dispersed.

"God, you scared the shit outta me," he heard her breath.

He felt his lungs relax and take in air slowly. His heart stopped thundering in his ears. There was something under his hands, thin fabric over something smooth and firm and warm. Her back. His hands were on her back. There was the curve of a rib. There were the ridges in her spine. Nothing burned. The air was cool and still, smelled lived-in and soft. The floor under his feet was smooth and hard. Her pulse raced against his chest like the smallest of things, a frantic songbird.

"You're okay," she said wetly, and Roy could feel her tears against his neck.

A distant, quiet corner of his mind told him to laugh at the absurdity of this, but he couldn't bring himself to comply. She felt like a ballast, something anchoring him here—warm, pliant proof to his five senses that he was not in that God-forsaken desert. He was somewhere else—anywhere else—with a woman who wept for him and pressed him to her chest and if he ever had to imagine a place furthest from Ishbal in every way, it would be right here.

"I'm okay," Roy said.

Winry squeezed him harder and sniffed.

He did laugh now. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Yes!" she snapped, still crying. "You _scared_ me."

Was there a point in being mortified that she had seen him, whining and kicking in his sleep? If there was, he couldn't bring his wrung out nerves to feel it. "That hasn't happened in a long time," he said. "I wouldn't have chosen for you to see it."

"I don't care," she cut across him.

She was leaned against him, half kneeling on the couch, half standing, in a position that was rather like straddling his thigh, and if Winry recognized their incredible closeness, she did not seemed bothered by it. Roy, to his credit, appreciated it, the impropriety and intimacy of it, so he resolved to push her away. In a moment. But then another moment had passed. And then another.

"It was like you weren't here," he heard her say. "It was like you weren't coming back."

She had no right feeling so much affection for him as that. And he certainly had no right reciprocating it, so he decided to let it be a temporary thing. It would serve a purpose now, and then it would drain out, like morphine in his blood. She pressed her breasts against him, pushed her knee into his inner thigh, let him feel the lithe curve of her back. He could abide that sort of thing in the dark and then, quite shamelessly, let the sun chase it away,

"I would think a person in your line of work wouldn't scare so easily," he said into her shoulder.

"I've seen plenty of soldiers suffering," she said, her voice dropping. She sniffed loudly then, and Roy could hear renewed tears in her voice, a sob quavering just below the surface. "But it's never been my fault before."

_What?_ Roy put his hands on her waist and pushed her back. "What did you just say?" he demanded.

Standing over him, his knee between hers, she sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Her eyes were swollen, the lamplight catching and lingering in her gathering tears. She drew in a shaking breath and exhaled, "I said it's never been my fault before."

A muscle behind his sternum wrenched, like someone had closed a fist in his chest. Another fist closed around his throat. He'd never heard anything so unconscionable.

"What in God's name makes you think you're at fault?" he managed.

"I can't even imagine," she began before pausing to swallow hard, "It must be hell to see my face."

She could easily say the same thing about him, he thought, his half-destroyed face, appearing in her life as uninvited as it was the first time, so many years ago. Why, in fact, she did not feel that way was a mystery to him.

Roy furrowed his brow at her. Instead, she brought him into her home and fed him. She roused him from his nightmares and she held him. She stood over him and wept for him for all the terrible things he'd done to her.

"Your face is a benediction, Winry," he said.

She barely restrained a sob and pressed her fingers to her mouth to hold it in. "Is that true?" she managed.

It hadn't been until that evening, but he could say now with confidence that it was. "It is."

"I always thought you must hate me."

He had hated her, hadn't he? When he'd seen her standing on her stoop, he'd hated her. He'd even hated her when she brought him in and let him use her phone. He had. Her face _was_ hell to him. He had once imagined no torment greater than being in her home.

"What a remarkably small person I would have to be to hate you," he said.

She covered her mouth again and shook her head as though she did not believe him, she couldn't bear to hear him. "I," she began. "I can't," she attempted again. She paused and took a long, shaking breath. She closed her eyes, tilted her face upward, and wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, composing herself. "You just... that really scared me for a minute."

That struck Roy as singularly endearing, her petty, irrational fear. Like something a child might create. Even through his sleep-fogged thoughts, he smiled at her. "I apologize."

"You don't need to do that."

"Yes. I do."

She watched him for a long time after that, the thoughts drifting through her eyes like clouds across a window. He saw a hurt and an old, old fear, the kind of fear that remained a last vestige of childhood, the kind that, try as she might, a person cannot put away. Then, because Winry was independent and, perhaps, a little guarded, there was anger, quiet and white hot, breathing like a coal. Then, there was her confusion, which Roy could understand—he imagined that she had no greater villain in her life than he, and he was not acting the part. And finally, she gave him a sweet, sad smile, and this sadness Roy could not understand. It was a dual grief, half personal and half deeply empathetic, the kind of grief that was quintessentially feminine and, thus, outside of Roy's capacity to return. But he could identify it and he could do his best to receive it, however ill-equipped he might be.

She nodded then slowly and resignedly. "Okay," she conceded. She nodded again, this time more to herself, and turned to shuffle back toward her bed behind the folding screen. She paused, though, and looked back at Roy. Her lips parted for a moment, but she said nothing. Then she turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

When he was alone, he felt the distinct impulse to pick up the mug he had been drinking from earlier and heave it against the wall, to hear it shatter, to watch his tea trickle down the wall in thin, crooked rivulets. Perhaps that would banish the bittersweet combination of the sensation of an untouchable woman under his hands and the sound of a victim apologizing. Instead, he turned off the lamp next to the couch and crawled under the blanket again.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Final part. Thanks, y'all.**  
**

**III.**

It was the preternaturally still hour just after dawn when Roy awoke, his back stiff and knees aching. The air was cold, chilled to a sharpness so that it almost hurt in his lungs, and in the thick, sluggish morning light—all shades of grey—the ceiling overhead seemed high and uninviting. But not unfamiliar.

He blinked and raised his hand to rub his eye, but when he touched the skin of his face, he didn't brush his fingers over the stiff fabric of his eyepatch. With both hands now, he searched his face. But it was gone. Had he taken it off in his sleep? Roy turned and looked around him and saw the patch sitting on the coffee table. How odd, he thought, that he would remove it in the night.

Roy pushed the blanket back and sat up, wincing as he did. Between the stiffness and the cold—his trousers and shirt were draped neatly over the back of a chair—he felt a greater longing for his own bed than he ever had. To make matters worse, all the whiskey the night before left his thoughts cottony and hazy, his mouth dry, and his stomach twisted and small. The thought of getting up and moving about Winry's apartment without her consent made him vaguely uncomfortable, but he knew he would feel immensely better with a glass of water in him. So he stood—keeping his motions small and slow to minimize the creaking of Winry's floorboards—and dressed. He couldn't manage the mobility in his back required to put on his suspenders, so they remained in a pile on the coffee table. Instead, he put his eyepatch in place and adjusted the strap to a familiar snugness.

It seemed strange, all this unearthly stillness in her apartment. She had, only the night before, filled the space to the walls, up to the ceiling, with the sound of her voice, the smell of her cooking, the warm, buttery light of the lamps.

The floor beneath his bare feet was quite chilly. He could see his breath hanging in the air, which made him suddenly a touch self-conscious about not brushing his teeth the night before. He made his way to the kitchen and drew a glass of water from the tap. He drank it all and then pulled another. He gargled a mouthful and spat it into the sink, which did something to mitigate the bacteria taste in his mouth. This second glass of water he took with him back into the parlor.

The windows in the kitchen and main room had snow piled generously on them—each individual pane was, perhaps, one quarter blocked by a blue-grey crescent, left from the night before. Roy had to draw directly up to the window to steal a look at the street below. The snow had stopped falling some time in the night, but the sky overhead was still thick and low. He had just a moment to look before his breath fogged the grimy glass, but he could see that the road was pillowy and white, indistinguishable from the sidewalk or alley below. He glanced at his wrist watch. It was just after seven-thirty. If the damn roads weren't clear by eight, he was calling the Director of the Department of Transportation, an old colleague Roy remembered specifically because he'd once broken the guy's nose during a wrestling team meet, freshman year at the academy.

The water was working, and by the time Roy made it back into the parlor, his stomach had settled. His head was feeling somewhat off still—it was not a pain necessarily but a dull blur around the edges—and his muscles remained unforgiving after the unusual night of sleep he'd gotten. He remembered quite suddenly that, with this dawn, he had now missed two doses of his medication. This surprised him somewhat: firstly, he often craved his medications between doses, so much so that he was usually _quite_ aware of how recently or not recently he'd taken them; and secondly, he was standing, rather stably in fact, after missing two doses—some mornings he could hardily walk to the kitchen to take his medication even when he had taken his scheduled dose the night before.

Roy looked down at himself. He certainly didn't feel like clicking his heels, but he was standing. The pain radiating out of his knee was present, of course, but it was not unmanageable. In fact, what really bothered him now was the stiffness in his shoulders from sleeping hunched up on the couch. He drained his glass and set it on the coffee table, and, with his fists on his hips, Roy felt himself smile. It would be nice to give his PT doctor some good news for a change.

Suddenly, Roy felt like he was being watched. He switched his gaze toward Winry's bed, expecting to see her peeking at him from around the screen, but she was not. He was still for a moment and listened, and he could hear her breath, low and even. He looked around then. No one else was in the room. He was alone. The feeling persisted, though, and when Roy looked over his shoulder he knew why. Of course. He was not alone at all.

In the grey morning light, he could see much better the row of pictures Winry had on her mantel, all in mismatched frames, probably all given or salvaged. Roy took a step closer. He saw a photograph of three blonde children, two boys and a girl, all of whom he recognized after only a moment of scrutiny. Edward and Alphonse Elric as very young children struck him as particularly odd as he often forgot that their lives began long before their paths intersected with his, and in his mind, they were born twelve and eleven respectively—one of them, of course, born as an eleven-year-old suit of armor. But there they were, five or six, perhaps? And Winry the same. Grinning and posing with varying degrees of attention-seeking animation.

Roy did not have any pictures from his childhood. The first photographic record of his existence began with class pictures at the academy, in which he appeared austere and precocious.

Next, there was a picture of Winry standing next to an elderly woman with glasses and a long-stemmed pipe in her mouth. Winry was, perhaps, thirteen or fourteen, young enough to be thin and limby and breastless. Roy did not recognize the old woman, but he knew who she was. He knew, as well, that he should recognize her. It was Winry's grandmother to whom he owed a greater debt than he did even to Winry: many people live to bury their parents, but no one should have to bury a child.

Winry had a picture of herself posing with a young woman Roy recognized after a moment as Hughes's old assistant, Scheska Meyer. There was a picture of another young woman with brown skin and dark hair save a shock of pale framing her face; she held a young toddler up toward the camera, and the two had matching grins.

Then, Roy saw the three pictures of Winry's parents, looking young and happy and healthy. He did not linger on these.

Finally, Winry had a photograph of a boy, hair the color of wet sand, sitting in a chair too large for him in a library too large for him. It took Roy a moment to place this young man, and once he did, he couldn't help but marvel a little at it. This was Alphonse Elric, in the body of his birth, twelve-years-old, perhaps. Roy had met him in this flesh briefly before, but, he admitted to himself with a pang of guilt, the name Alphonse would always bring to mind the hulking suit of armor. Not this boy.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He could really use a cup of coffee, but the thought of combing the cabinets in the kitchen for grounds and filters and the percolator made him particularly uncomfortable. Perhaps the photographs, still-frames of Winry's life, distinct from him and terribly private, reminded him what an interloper he was here.

Mounted on the wall over the mantel was another frame, this one larger than the others. Roy took a step closer to it and squinted a little through the darkness. This one did not have a picture in it, he could tell that much. The white background was bordered by pale yellow flowers and green vines. There appeared to be a passage in the frame, and after another moment of scrutiny, Roy determined that it was stitched into the background:

_I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:_

_I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow._

_I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of over-treatment and therapeutic nihilism._

_I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug._

_I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery._

_I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God._

_I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick._

_I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure._

_I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm._

_If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help._

_Sara & Urey_

_1898_

He recognized the passage almost immediately. This was the Hippocratic Oath, a set of ethical standards sworn to by doctors. It would have significance to the Rockbells, wouldn't it? He could guess that this was a wedding present, given to Winry's parents, perhaps somewhat humorously as most couples would expect to receive their wedding vows painstakingly stitched and embellished. 1898 was probably the year of their marriage. Roy executed them ten years later. In February, if he recalled correctly.

He scanned it again because he was feeling suddenly rather compelled to masochistic curiosity. With this second reading, however, he paused perhaps one-third of the way through and lingered on a particular line: _I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug._

Why did that sound so familiar? He turned the words over in his mind again and again and cursed, again, that bullet behind his eye, which felt like a wall sometimes that he could not scale or circumvent. Instead, he did what he always did with that wall: he flung himself against it, over and over, hoping that maybe this time, it would crumble.

Roy squeezed his eye shut and focused. What was it? What was so damn familiar?

He knew the answer was there. He knew the shape of it, but not the details. It was nestled somewhere in the mixed up, damaged records in his mind, and he knew, something told him, that this was important.

_Warmth, sympathy, and understanding..._

Goddammit. He could almost reach it, could almost brush his fingertips over it. This memory, cold and round and just at the bottom of a pocket. He knew it was near. He could almost close his fist around it.

x

Roy's eye shot open.

He watched himself drop his car keys in the bowl by the door with one hand as he riffled through that morning's mail with the other. He closed the door behind him with his foot. Tossing his mail down on dining room table, Roy unbuttoned the front of his heavy, blue coat. He watched himself drape it over his arm and head for the bedroom to change out of the uniform.

When he returned to the main floor, his first stop was the kitchen to pour himself two fingers of scotch, toss back his pain medication—which his doctor always told him not to take with alcohol, but he did anyway—and look in the icebox for some inspiration for dinner. Roy could not imagine a meal he could concoct from some overly-ripe milk and a bottle of mustard, so he closed the door and decided to worry about it when he got hungrier. In the meantime, he returned to the dining room table to give his mail another once over. With the envelopes in hand, he sank slowly, painfully into a chair. He flipped between the unsolicited advertisements and revolving medical bills mechanically, sorting them haphazardly into a _keep_ pile and a _burn_ pile. He paused, however, when his gaze landed on a plain letter-sized envelope with the Central Department of Human Services as the return address. The letter felt oddly weighted, like there was something heavier than just a paperclip in the bottom right corner. Roy furrowed his brow, flipped the envelope over, and tore it open.

Peering inside, he saw a single page document addressed to him, which he pulled out and set on the table. Then, turning to envelope upside down, he dumped the remaining contents into his palm. He brought his hand closer to his eye.

There were two wedding bands, both gold and unadorned, one thicker and clearly masculine and the other slender and light.

"What the hell is this?" he muttered to himself, setting the envelope and rings aside.

He picked up the accompanying document, on official letterhead, and read what little explanation there was. One of the later stages of the Ishballan Restoration, it seemed, was to reclaim all the remains that had been hurriedly dumped in mass graves and to inter them properly. Cremation had, for centuries, been the Ishballan tradition as burial in sand tended to desiccate and preserve the bodies, thus preventing a proper unification with the Divine in their belief. The wedding bands, it seemed, had come off two bodies identified as Sara and Urey Rockbell.

The tumbler of scotch slipped out of his hand and hit the hardwood, shattering.

According to the department's records, he had been identified as the next of kin to the Rockbells after attempts to reach other family members had been unsuccessful. The Department of Human Services sent their deepest sympathies and hoped that the return of the Rockbell's rings would help in the healing process.

Roy sat very still for a moment to make quite certain that he was not going to vomit. Then he forced his lungs to expand. He looked at the rings on his table and felt irrationally compelled to put some distance between himself and them. Like they were stinging insects.

What the hell was he supposed to do with them? He imagined that whichever intern the Department of Human Services had distributing the effects of those killed in Ishbal had simply flipped through the Rockbell's file for names and spotted his, ignoring the context in which his name appeared. Although he knew that the bureaucratic clockwork was prone to doing some truly stupid things, this was appalling. This was _appalling_.

In lieu of all the other coiling emotions that knotted up behind his sternum, Roy felt himself grow very, _very_ angry. How dare they send these God-forsaken rings to him? How dare they involve him in this messy, distasteful process? Any idiot would know that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the Rockbells.

Roy had to get rid of those rings. Tonight. They had to be out of his house and then he could let his broken mind misplace the memory of them and then they could be lost to him forever. He considered getting in his car, driving past the city limits, and dropping them on the side of the road. He could step out onto his back porch and hurl them into the woods behind his house. He could go into town, find the closest begging indigent, and drop the rings into his tin can.

When all these notions made his stomach twist tighter and tighter, Roy knew what he had to do. Stepping over the broken glass, he stood from the table and went into the kitchen where he began making phone calls. He knew Hawkeye was still in the office—she would be able to chase down someone in the Department of Human Services to take these fucking rings back.

Hawkeye, of course, answered the phone after two rings. Roy kept his tone clipped and flat as he explained to her his situation, and she listened in silence.

"That's quite the oversight," she said. "I'll be happy to take the package back tomorrow morning."

"No," Roy cut across her. "This needs to be addressed tonight."

She was quiet a moment. "I doubt anyone will be there at this time of evening, sir. Most offices are closed."

Roy was silent, breathing through his nose.

"Though, if I remember correctly, sir, Winry Rockbell lives in Central. You could put the package in the mail. It would reach her in a day or so."

"If she lives in Central, I'll take it directly to her."

"I don't think that would be wise, General. I expect it probably will start snowing within the hour."

Roy was silent again, willing her to understand that this was not something that could wait.

He heard her sigh resignedly. "I believe Lieutenant Havoc knows her address, sir."

Roy did not question. "Fine," he said and hung up the phone.

In minutes, he had called Havoc, gotten vague directions to her apartment, and was preparing to leave. He dropped the rings in his pocket and checked his watch. He could beat the snow, he thought. He had enough time to find her mail slot, deposit the rings, and let that be the last time he thought of Winry Rockbell for a long, long time.

x

Roy blinked. The lamp was on behind Winry's privacy screen, casting a muted yellow light and making the glass in the frames over the mantel glint. He heard linens rustling and then being thrown back. He watched her silhouette sit up in the bed, then stand, then stretch its hands up toward the ceiling. Winry made a long, low groaning sound and dropped her arms. Roy couldn't seem to tear his gaze away. He watched her come around the screen, her bare feet padding on the floorboards. She was looking at him when she appeared, rubbing one eye with her fist.

"Oh, Roy," she said a little blearily. "You're up. Did you sleep okay?"

He opened his mouth, but the sounds dried up in his throat before he could even make them.

"Sorry. That was an asshole thing to ask," she said, smiling. "Maybe I just shouldn't talk before I get coffee in me, huh?"

How was he going to tell her? What could he say?

"Roy?" she persisted. "You okay?" She came up to him, her brow furrowed.

"I have something for you," he blurted.

She blinked. "Oh. Um, okay."

"Stay here," he instructed and went to retrieve his coat from the foyer. It was hanging on a hook on the wall. He pulled it down and checked the inside pocket. There they were, the Rockbells' wedding rings, round and cold and bright despite the semi-darkness. With his coat still draped over his arm and the rings in his closed fist, Roy returned to the parlor, where Winry was waiting.

She looked puzzled and more than a little concerned, but when Roy told her to put out her hand, she obeyed. He dropped the rings into her open palm.

"These belong to you," he said.

She watched his face a moment longer and then lowered her gaze to her hand. Then slowly, by degrees, she recognized them. Her parents' wedding rings.

"How," she began, flicking her wide, searching eyes up to him once more, "How did you get these?"

"They were sent to me in error," he said. "A soldier retrieved them when your parents were disinterred and given a proper burial in Ishbal."

"P-proper burial?"

"That's what I've been told," he said. "I received them yesterday evening, and I came here with the intention of giving them back to you."

She watched him for a moment, her lips just parted. "You remember?"

He couldn't help but laugh. "I remember."

He watched her close her hand and press it to her sternum. She drew in a long, large breath, her gaze now lingering vaguely at his shirtfront. She swallowed, shook her head, gasped in another breath. Roy knew the signs of a woman about to faint, and he caught her around the ribs when she began wobbling on her feet. She flopped forward against him, stammering apologies as he helped her to the couch.

Once she was seated and Roy was standing before her, she opened her hand and looked at the rings again.

"I thought they were lost."

Roy was not certain if she meant the rings or her parents' bodies or something else entirely. "Not lost," he said, "Misplaced, perhaps."

She spent another moment watching the rings, her mouth parted in disbelief. Then, without looking up, she said, "You walked all the way from your house to here, in the snow," she flicked her gaze up, "to give me these?"

When put like that, it sounded quite chivalrous. Roy would have to correct that lest she think him capable of doing something so decent. "It's not nearly so flattering as that," he explained. "I was... very angry when I received them."

She furrowed her brow, and Roy wished she would put that damn quizzical expression away to spare him having to explain it further.

"I felt imposed upon. Inconvenienced, even. If I had known, in fact, that I would see you, I probably would have sent my assistant to deliver them." He paused for a breath and watched the understanding slide over her face. "My haste to," _say it_, "be rid of your parents' wedding bands was rooted in my fear and discomfort more than anything else. Certainly more than anything admirable."

She would have been within her rights to rise to her feet, to thank him for delivering the rings, and to ask him to leave. He knew where the door was and was prepared to find it on his own, even if it meant going out into the knee-deep snow and waiting for someone, _anyone_, to come rescue him. At least she knew the truth now, the ignominious truth. He was exactly the kind of small, wounded man to hate her, to blame her for the ghosts he'd made, to think seeing her face was like hell.

She stared at him, her face hurt and a little confused, and Roy could not bear to stand there and look at her. A little girl, made vulnerable anew, whom he'd tricked into thinking that he had the capacity to be a nice man. He'd taken advantage of her enough for once night. He could endure no more. So, picking his coat up and gathering his shoes, he turned toward the exit. If there was anything left to say, perhaps something to soothe her a little, he could not think of it.

He took one deliberate step toward the door.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Roy paused. Perhaps she believed he deserved worse punishment than that terribly wounded look on her face, and he knew he was in no position to avoid it. He turned and looked at her over his shoulder.

She stood, her hands clutching the rings before her sternum.

"Of course," she said, shaking her head. "Of course, you were frightened. What man wouldn't be? I..." she paused, searching for the right word, "I never would have expected you not to be. You still brought them out here. I mean, you could have thrown them away."

"The thought crossed my mind," he admitted, a little stunned by her response. She wasn't begrudging him his reluctance, was she? No, she was affirming it. Forgiving it, even.

"You wouldn't do that," she said as she looked down and slipped her mother's wedding band onto her ring finger and her father's on to her thumb. "You know how I know that?" she asked, meeting his eye. "Because you are a man with integrity, Roy."

Had he told her about that, he wondered. He must have. Yes, he remembered now, shortly before they both went to sleep, telling her what integrity meant to him. He did not, however, believe that this was a very good example of his notion of integrity at all—he had not brought her the rings out of a sense of moral obligation or a desire to aid her healing process. He had not done it because he believed it was the right thing to do.

"The thought of throwing the rings out made me want to vomit," Roy heard himself say. "Otherwise, I probably would have. I don't want to misled you into thinking I've got a particularly fine-tuned moral compass, Winry."

She smiled at him like he had told her a joke only she understood. "I think the only person you're misleading is yourself, Roy," she said. "Put down your stuff and let me make you a cup of coffee before you go at least."

She brushed past him, heading for the kitchen, and he stood in her parlor, his coat and shoes in hand, the sun now emboldened enough to chase the grey light into the corners of the room. Without any idea, even the slightest clue of how to proceed, he tossed his coat over the back of the couch and dropped his shoes on the floor with a thud. Then, unburdened, he turned and followed Winry.

x

x

x

They split an omelet and a couple sausage links and a pot of coffee between them. She served him a spicy, yellow tea with a spoonful of honey that she said would help with some of the pain. White willow bark, turmeric, and arnica, she explained as she ground what looked like landscaping mulch into a powder with a mortar and pestle. Perhaps it was just placebo effect, but within twenty minutes, his back and shoulders seemed to unclench and the pain in his knee dulled.

By the time they had finished breakfast, the streets had been plowed, so while Roy stacked dishes in the sink, Winry called the taxi company. They said they would have a cab at her address in fifteen minutes.

This gave Roy enough time to gather up the linens he had used the night before and stuff them into the hamper while Winry dressed behind the screen. Now, with the whiskey drained from his blood, Roy could will himself to look elsewhere, not that he could have sees her shape projected against the fabric in the muted morning light anyway. Still, he did his part to maintain her modesty, even if she was unconcerned about changing clothes in a room with a man.

When she emerged, Roy was pushing the twists out of his suspenders. Even with Winry's natural remedies, Roy did not think he could manage to clasp the buttons in the back of his waistband. He must have been looking at his suspenders with a defeated expression because Winry drew up to him and took them from his hands.

"Turn around," she commanded. He obeyed, and he could feel her knuckles against his back as she fitted the eyes around the buttons on his trousers. "I bet you have a pretty, young housekeeper at home who does this for you."

Roy snorted. "Again, you must think me in a very different pay grade than I actually am."

"Being a brigadier general doesn't afford you some help?"

"A housekeeper? Yes. Nubile slave women to help me dress in the mornings? Not quite."

He heard her let out a peel of laughter, high and light as birdsong. "Sounds like you need a wife. I hear they're free, you know?"

"Ha!" he said. "You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?"

She laughed and laughed, and when Roy turned, she was holding her stomach, her face turned upward. That made him smile, her unabashed display of delight, as he attached the front straps of his suspenders.

He stepped into his shoes, and Winry held his coat open for him. He noticed that she still had her parents' wedding rings on her fingers as she pushed the lapels of his coat over his shoulders. Then, together, they walked down the stairs, the air in the stairwell as cold and thick as the undisturbed snow on the windows. She held the front door open for him as Roy stepped carefully out onto the icy front landing, his cab parked in a cloud of exhaust below. Winry stepped out behind him, catching the door with her heel to keep it from closing.

She let him get a step down before she said, "Hey, Roy?"

He paused and turned back to her, eye level with her now and incredibly close.

"Thanks for coming by."

He watched her face, pale and bright in the sunlight, her breath condensing around her like a shroud. Her cheeks were turning pink, and while he was certain the cold air had something to do with it, he did not know if it was wholly responsible.

"It was my pleasure," he said somewhat ironically—she had rescued him off the icy sidewalk, hadn't she?

She was leaning forward before he could think to withdraw, her hands on his shoulders, her lips pressed to the corner of his mouth. She was hot to the touch, her mouth a brand against his skin, her breath a warm veil against his face. His hands felt the narrowness of her waist through her ill-fitting winter coat, the smallness of her, thinned-boned and so fragile.

"I'd like to see you again," he said as she withdrew, the warmth of her lips lingering on his face.

"I'd like that, too," she said.

Was he allowed to say things like that to her, he wondered as he turned and stepped gingerly down the stairs. Typically, a declaration like that meant, when he'd said it to other women, _I'd like to sleep with you eventually_. But he did not mean that with Winry. Certainly, the thought had occurred to him—how could it not with her breasts pressed to his chest and her thighs around his—but he meant, quite honestly, that he wanted to see her again. Even if it was just dinner, just a conversation over better liquor. He wanted to see her again. He did not want to lose her.

The snow on the sidewalk was already trodden to a grey slush, and he waded carefully through it to the door of the taxi. He hesitated there and turned back, but she was gone. This was, perhaps, for the best, as Roy was not certain what he had planned to tell to her. Had he thanked her yet? That would have been a good thing to say then.

He opened the cab door and slipped inside. The heater was running and the air freshener was new. He gave the driver his address, and they took off down the road, leaving Winry's apartment behind them. Roy watched her kitchen window until they turned right, and he lost sight of it. She had not popped up in the window, though, to wave him goodbye or grant him a last smile.

And that was fine, he thought. She was probably still making her way, slowly and thoughtfully up the stairs to her door, piecing together all the parts of the last night just as he was doing, trying to determine if she were actually okay with everything she had said, judging her minutest gestures and declarations, just as he was doing. And if he were lucky, she was coming to the same conclusion that he was.


End file.
